Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony, Wasps Overture / ... - Chandos: CHSA 5047 | Buy from ArkivMusic This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players. ----- Iï¿½m not personally a believer in the notion of definitive recordings... But I do think that overall the recording, playing and singing of this Hickox version set a new standard. This is the latest instalment of Richard Hickoxï¿½s cycle of Vaughan Williams symphonies, the first on SACD. It began with his recording in 1997 of Symphony 5, followed by the original version of A London Symphony in 2000, Symphony 4 in 2001, the Pastoral Symphony in 2002 and Symphonies 6 and 8 in 2003. First on this SACD comes a generous bonus, The overture (tr. 1) written for the incidental music to Aristophanesï¿½ Read more comedy The Wasps. The creatures buzz around in the introduction with menacing efficiency.

The first theme, the first of the old tunes of Phrymicus, is jauntily introduced by clarinet and bassoon at 0:56 and progresses breezily, as befits its ï¿½scherzandoï¿½, ï¿½playfulï¿½, marking. The second old tune (1:17) is treated with breadth by the horns with the violins. But the tune everyone remembers is the glowing third theme (3:19), a typical big RVW tune which represents the reconciliation of Bdelycleon with his father Philoclean. This Hickox gives the warmth of a perfect summerï¿½s morning, sensitively slightly leaning on the melody at the apex (3:56) and giving it a lift. Itï¿½s followed by a balmy succession of wind solos. The trenchant return of the second theme smoothes out in the strings at 7:54 to a fresh air effect before a creamy celebration of the return of the big tune in combination with the first theme which is now a little more polite.

I compared the 2005 recording by the Hallé Orchestra/Mark Elder (Hallé CD HLD 7510). Heï¿½s slightly faster overall at 9:36 against Hickoxï¿½s 9:59 and his variations in tempo are a little more marked in a performance which has more greasepaint about it. His wasps in the introduction are scarier, with more of a sense of swarming attacks in droves. The central idyll isnï¿½t as smooth but more tender and personal, the big tune serenely relaxed in utter contentment. Its return highlights the trumpet solo to more radiant effect, which I prefer to Hickoxï¿½s allowing prominence to the woodwind partial doubling, though this may partly be courtesy of the Chandos surround sound which brings out the percussion, bass drum in particular, more vividly throughout.

Hickox and Chandos realize the stringsï¿½ sul ponticello, that nasal, brittle effect achieved by bowing near the bridge, more distinctively, so Hickoxï¿½s wasps are scarier when they return sul ponticello at 1:52 and you notice, after the big tune as the wind solos of individual contentment start with the clarinets a reduced body of sul ponticello strings tremolo in the background at 4:24. The wasps are still there, but contained. Hickox has a gentler, musing feeling to that big tune and his shaping of it emphasises that reflective quality. This ties in well with the following wind solos which are gorgeously done while the horns are superb throughout. All in all, this first recording in surround sound turns out to be a worthy one. A Sea Symphony, like The Wasps, was also completed in 1909 and also enjoys phases of jauntiness, such as the first movement (tr.

2) Allegro, ï¿½Today a rude, brief, recitativeï¿½ (3:11) and, if not a big tune, a big hearted unifying motif, first heard at ï¿½and on its limitless heaving breast, the shipsï¿½ (0:35) which, like the opening chorus harmonic progression (0:09) can be found in all 4 movements. Hickoxï¿½s opening is fresh and arresting, with weight as well as flow. The chorus is enthusiastic and welcoming. And how explicitly chorus and orchestra at ï¿½of waves spreadingï¿½ (4:34) show Vaughan Williams constructing the entries in tiers to illustrate the text. Baritone soloist Gerald Finleyï¿½s golden tone is an excellent match with always a glint of appreciation in his voice. Susan Gritton is an imposing soprano soloist with a thrilling top A at ï¿½Token of all brave captainsï¿½ (10:35) but the following chorus to the same words (10:55) is beautifully tender with a lovely sympathetic murmuring strings and clarinet backcloth.

It becomes more emotive to a full climax at 12:39 and yet still has something of restraint about it, as befits a tribute. It continues with great spaciousness when a little slower, as marked, as ï¿½all that went down doing their dutyï¿½ attains a tellingly hushed quality (12:58). None of the other 3 recordings which I mention below has such sensitivity. On the other hand ï¿½Emblem of manï¿½ (14:13) features some equally fine, really quite heroically operatic choral singing before the soprano soloistï¿½s superb top B (17:11) as she becomes her text, ï¿½One flag above all the restï¿½. Now here are some very soft but perceptible sul ponticello strings in this symphony to give an eerie backcloth to the sense of mystery at this second invocation of ï¿½Behold the seaï¿½ (17:24). The soft coda is beautifully done with absolute clarity of soloists and chorus divided into 9 parts.

The soloists are always heard from within the ensemble as it were, with no especially forward positioning, which I like. I compared the two recordings already available in surround sound. The most recent is the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and Orchestra/Paul Daniel (Naxos 6.110016) recorded in 2002. The other surround sound recording is the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Robert Spano (Telarc SACD 60588). I also compared Hickoxï¿½s 1989 recording with the London Symphony Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra, the only RVW symphony he recorded before his Chandos cycle (Virgin Classics VC 7908432, no longer available). . . . Danielï¿½s opening has fire and breadth but the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus donï¿½t have the impact of the London Symphony Chorus. Daniel brings out the drama in the orchestration, however, with rhythms particularly incisive. Baritone soloist Christopher Maltman, close miked, is characterful but, with some vibrato, less smooth than Gerald Finley and so seems more deliberate.

Also close miked, soprano soloist Joan Rodgers has abundant presence but again, with more vibrato, lacks Susan Grittonï¿½s smooth clarity. The chorus ï¿½Token of all brave captainsï¿½ is here a warm tribute but misses Hickoxï¿½s delicacy of tone, partly owing to the acoustic of Poole Arts Centre being more reverberant than the Barbican. At ï¿½Emblem of manï¿½ the Bournemouth chorus is disadvantaged in relation to the orchestra spitting fire. On the other hand the later sul ponticello strings are very distinct. Spano, despite his faster timing, is more notable for power and weight than freshness. His orchestra is vividly captured, the percussion effects quite spectacular and orchestral detail throughout is excellent except for those sul ponticello strings which are overmuch on the edge of audibility. The chorus is hearty where appropriate, but its ï¿½Token of all brave captainsï¿½ is initially too matter-of-fact, probably because excessively driven forward.

Baritone soloist Brett Polegato, not as close miked as Christopher Maltman, is spirited but lacks the unforced character and smoothness of phrasing that Gerald Finley shows. Soprano soloist Christine Goerke, who like Joan Rodgers uses more vibrato, isnï¿½t as effective as Susan Gritton. In comparison with its surround sound successors the 1989 Hickox recording is bright but rather shallow. The performance, however, is just as fresh as 2006ï¿½s and rather more fiery and, in this respect, exciting. The chorus ï¿½Token of all brave captainsï¿½ is tender but the diction isnï¿½t as clear as in 2006, the sound a little mushy. However, it climaxes well where both Daniel and Spano get a little ragged and, just as in 2006, thereï¿½s a lovely calming thereafter. Hickoxï¿½s experience as Director of the London Symphony Chorus, heï¿½d been that for 11 years in 1989, serves him well.

The soloists arenï¿½t as good as in 2006. Baritone soloist Stephen Roberts approaches the heroic quality of Gerald Finley but his tone is too light to have sufficient impact. Like Finley, he isnï¿½t close miked. Soprano soloist Margaret Marshall is rather screechy in climactic passages. At this point I felt the recording under review, the 2006 Hickox, was in danger of getting lost. So I went back to it and was thrilled by the way soloists, chorus and orchestra all blended as a team and a recording balance more successfully than the other 3 recordings. Hickoxï¿½s more expansive tempo overall doesnï¿½t make the performance seem slower because heï¿½s scrupulous about all the changes, including increases in tempo, called for. It does, however, give it a more heroic quality, making it a celebration of grandeur and relish rather than simply dramatic bluster. It also brought home to me, despite the large orchestral and choral forces, how crucial the soloists are. To put it plainly, Finley is the classiest baritone and Gritton the purest toned soprano.

As a result I decided the only other version of the 4 I began with for which a continuing comparison is worthwhile is Danielï¿½s. The second movement (tr. 3) is a nocturne and Hickox, despite his expansive tempo, still invests it with warmth and movement. Vaughan Williams marks it ï¿½solenne e tranquilloï¿½. Hickox is tranquil but rather more respectful than solemn, and I think thatï¿½s right. The fascination of the movement comes from the interplay between baritone soloist, chorus and orchestra. The soloist has virtually no melody but sparse, plain statements - Gerald Finley showing fine white tone - are more freely expanded by chorus and orchestra. So, for example at 2:14 an oboe marked ï¿½agitatedï¿½ depicts the stated ï¿½bright star shiningï¿½. The soloist, like the star, is one element in a vast expanse.

The soloist has a moment of shining appreciation in the central section at ï¿½A vast similitude interlocks allï¿½ (3:58) but the chorus, here lightly ecstatic, has the climax at ï¿½This vast similitude spans themï¿½ (6:32) followed by resplendent orchestral fanfares. Then we return to the stillness of the opening music, just the soloistï¿½s opening phrase, the rest reprised by orchestra alone. But the words already heard enable us to appreciate the density of the atmosphere, not least the wonderfully distant muted pair of horns (9:56) answered by first clarinet and the gentlest swell of the lower strings. Danielï¿½s opening has less warmth than Hickox because his phrasing is less poised. Hickox also places the trombones and bass trombone punctuation of the opening stringsï¿½ phrases more raptly. The closer miking of Christopher Maltman means heï¿½s over prominent in relation to the chorus though in musical elaboration heï¿½s less important.

He articulates with admirable clarity but his fuller tone, especially at the beginning, misses the feel that Finley and the LSO Chorus get of a party of folk towards the middle distance, only part of a vast expanse. At the same time, the better Chandos balancing of soloist and chorus means the expressiveness of the individual chorus parts is also more apparent. The third movement (tr. 4) is a scherzo featuring just chorus and orchestra. For Hickox the London Symphony Chorus is fresh, alert and lean. At ï¿½Waves, undulating wavesï¿½ (1:29) the tiering of the chorus parts is vividly realized to bring the effect of waves breaking as they rapidly roll towards you. At 2:32 comes a big RVW tune for the trio, ï¿½Where the great vessel sailingï¿½, marked ï¿½largamenteï¿½, ï¿½broadlyï¿½.

But itï¿½s not just showy: Hickox gives the orchestral brass a jamboree bounce and the chorus gets louder, as marked, for their headier ï¿½flashing and frolicsomeï¿½ (3:19). Later an orchestral interlude dissolves into calm. Nothing on the horizon. Then the chorus pops up again with ï¿½After the sea shipï¿½ (5:33). And their palpable, half whispered eagerness made me understand they are the waves wanting to begin the chase. Danielï¿½s approach is bright and immediate, dramatic and squally in effect. Those ï¿½undulating wavesï¿½ explode over you. The big tune is beefy. The orchestral interlude writhes but its dissolving isnï¿½t as delicately poetic as Hickoxï¿½s. Daniel is direct and intense, but Hickox catches more of the playfulness of a scherzo and the impressionistic flair of its orchestration with more light and shade, variation of tone, colour and texture.

The London Symphony Chorus, though not so hefty or full in tone as the Bournemouth, sounds more spirited and shows more dynamic contrast. By attention to tempo and mood changes Hickox maintains the cohesion of the lengthy finale (tr. 5) in which particularly, as Michael Kennedyï¿½s booklet note eloquently puts it ï¿½the sea becomes a metaphor for a voyage into eternity.ï¿½ Though the structure is more complex, as performed here 5 phases clearly emerge. The opening phase is a hymn for the chorus which Hickox presents as a warm homage with a sense of space, immensity and appreciation of all this. The second phase is a faster one of action, ï¿½Down from the gardens of Asia descendingï¿½ (4:38), the feel of ï¿½restless explorationsï¿½ is caught as the chorus becomes more testy. Then the haunting appearance at 6:39 of ppp semi-chorus singing ï¿½Wherefore unsatisfied soul?ï¿½: isolated, distant, like an echo of the Sirens.

Suddenly despair turns to hope with the loud ï¿½Perhaps even now the time has arrivedï¿½ and the movement turns dramatic, with a rapturous welcoming of the Son of God ï¿½singing his songsï¿½ (9:51) and one of the few times, even in surround sound, the organ can clearly be heard. The third phase begins with a breezy orchestral interlude (10:55), a kind of backdrop for the entrance of the soloists (11:31), impetuous at first but then beautifully becalming to an intimate haven and, again with Hickox, space to experience it, ï¿½thoughts, silent thoughts, of time and space and Deathï¿½. I like the sensitive observation, especially by Susan Gritton of the marked sudden pp at ï¿½Deathï¿½ (15:01). The fourth phase is another hymn, ï¿½O thou transcendentï¿½ (16:56), this time contrasting the soloists and massed chorus effects.

The final phase, ï¿½Away, O soulï¿½ (20:31) begins as one of escape, with kicking excitement and raring to go. The choral acclamation ï¿½Sail forthï¿½ (21:36) evokes and honours a huge ship going on its way. But the specialty of the soulï¿½s journey is also considered with anxiety, zeal and acceptance in turn before the closing slow, irrevocable disappearance. Danielï¿½s approach to the finale is more emotive, less analytical than Hickoxï¿½s. His opening is fuller in tone and heavier in texture but intent, its climax noble. His tempo change to the second phase is less striking and the semi-chorus, ï¿½Wherefore unsatisfied soul?ï¿½, not as quiet or unearthly as Hickoxï¿½s, nor is the change at ï¿½Perhaps even now the time has arrivedï¿½ so marked but the following climax has joyously heartfelt ï¿½singing his songsï¿½.

His orchestral interlude has less delicacy than Hickoxï¿½s but Rogers and Maltman are more operatic and thereby jubilant, in a manner closer to a love duet than the more chastely objective Gritton and Finley. Daniel is impressive in the glowing grandeur he brings to the fourth phase. His final phase is more precipitant than Hickoxï¿½s, bringing a sense of courageous adventure. In the finale Danielï¿½s more subjective, less contrasted view, unashamedly homing in on the emotions, results in a more direct and certainly moving experience. But then I returned to the Hickox recording under review and was very satisfied in a different way. Hickox aims, more ambitiously, like Vaughan Williams did, for a more visionary experience. Hickoxï¿½s opening has more humility, benignant warmth and shiningly glistening high violins. His dynamic contrasts are more effective, such as the marked softening at ï¿½and the teeming spiritual darknessï¿½ at 1:34. The first phase orchestral climax has an austere grandeur.

Greater tempo contrast for the second phase gives more edge to its procession and ï¿½singing his songsï¿½ is undeniably fervent. The orchestral interlude has a telling, sheer impressionist sweep and delicacy. A moment to recall RVW was a pupil of Ravel. The third phase soloistsï¿½ duet is fastidious, oratorio style - though that canï¿½t fairly be said of Grittonï¿½s wholehearted top B at ï¿½chanting our chantï¿½ (13:04) - but also very beautifully and sensitively sung. The contrasts in the fourth phase are big hearted. The final phase is bright and vivacious, with emphasis on choral clarity yet ï¿½Sail forthï¿½ has resilient fervour. Admittedly the soloistsï¿½ duet at ï¿½Reckless O soul, exploringï¿½ (22:06) is not very Allegro agitato but instead rather ponders the notion of recklessness. The golden tone all achieve at the close is what you remember. Iï¿½m not personally a believer in the notion of definitive recordings.

When it comes to A Sea Symphony I appreciate the insights within many fine performances, notably the two Boult (Decca and EMI), Previn (RCA) and Haitink (EMI) and, yes, in the finale, Daniel. But I do think that overall the recording, playing and singing of this Hickox version set a new standard. -- Michael Greenhalgh, MusicWeb International Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 3 'A Pastoral Symphony' on CD, SACD & download (MP3 & FLAC) - Buy online from Presto Classical Vaughan Williams : Symphonies Nos. 1-9 The State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR Ministry of Culture, Gennady Rozhdestvensky Melodiya presents a complete set of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s symphonies conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky.Vaughan Williams was one of the largest figures of the English Musical Renaissance, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A composer, conductor, organist, folklore student and publicist, Vaughan Williams today is mostly known for his large-scale symphonic works.

The English composer’s nine symphonies sequentially reflect the evolution of his creative style (the first one was composed in 1903, and the last one not long before he died in 1958). Each of them seems to be a continuation, a development of the previous one (a sort of “chapters of one novel”), but neither repeats any other one in structure, composition, concept or music. Some of the symphonies are closely connected with national poetry (Walt Whitman), episodes from the English history or pictures of native countryside.Absorbing a wide range of sources realized in Vaughan Williams’s style – from old folk songs and religious hymns to musical impressionism and jazz – his symphonies are notable for expressive figurativeness and melodic resourcefulness, and open to any keen ear.The recordings of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies performed by the prominent conductor and recognized master of interpretation of 20th century music were made at concerts in 1988–1989 in Leningrad.

“This must count as one of the more surprising issues to have come my way – though a very welcome surprise...I never expected to hear Russian forces performing all nine works...it’s a cycle that lovers of Vaughan Williams – and all admirers of Gennady Rozhdestvensky – should try to hear. I’m delighted to have heard it and even more delighted that these splendid symphonies were so effectively championed by Russian musicians in their own country.” MusicWeb International, 12th June 2014 “Perhaps a rather unlikely set - an illustration that not all the convincing accounts of Vaughan Williams are necessarily by English or British musicians, and indeed the Russians here make their case engagingly. Definitely worth a listen for a different perspective on Vaughan Williams' symphonic output.” David Smith, Presto Classical, June 2014 Up to 25% off Melodiya San Francisco Symphony - Articles & Interviews San Francisco Symphony April 20, 2011 by Larry Rothe Almost everything about him is misunderstood, starting with his name. Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Ralph is pronounced Rafe (“any other pronunciation used to drive him mad,” his wife Ursula cautioned), to rhyme with safe and chafe, words his detractors might apply to his music. Vaughan is not his middle name, so he is not referred to as Williams. The surname is Vaughan Williams, not hyphenated but fused just the same. Ralph Vaughan Williams. Even today, fifty years after his death, his English countrymen simplify the issue and call him VW. Enough about the name. That’s easy. What is less easy to explain is why this composer of nine symphonies, each symphony a masterpiece to greater or lesser extent, is not yet recognized—certainly not in this country—as one of the twentieth century’s greatest musical figures. He was not necessarily a ground-breaker, but we need only listen to his symphonies to discover how visionary, how embracing, how provocative, and how inspiring he could be: how universal.

Often, however, and largely due to his own attitude toward his work, he is dismissed as a representative of the English pastoral school, someone who turned out appealing but determinedly regional music, a nationalist, respected but never to be spoken of in the same breath as others who have worn the nationalist label with distinction, composers such as Dvořák or Sibelius or Copland. His life spanned an epoch. He was born on October 12, 1872, in the village of Down Ampney, in Gloucestershire, about ninety miles west of London. The name “Down Ampney” calls up images of stone churches, rolling green countryside, meat-paste sandwiches taken with Earl Grey poured from a china kettle, public-house pints sipped beside the roaring fire while Nigel bests Bob at darts—the stereotypes that once upon a time captivated North American English majors, those lovers of Dickens and Hardy who were resigned to the knowledge that, for all their efforts, their British accents would never be genuine. Down Ampney seems indeed to have produced beloved stereotypes, or to have been produced by them. By the time VW died, on August 26, 1958, the times had left that world behind.

Despite his breeding, however, and setting aside the English gentilities of tea-time and a constitutional tolerance of inadequately heated rooms, he was not a character out of Masterpiece Theater and he was no invention of the BBC. He drew strength from his roots. He fused skepticism with vision. He was the product of folk-song and hymns, an occasional pint of bitter, an artist’s passion to communicate, and the twentieth century, with all that that century meant to his country, including a vanishing rural life, a generation maimed in body and spirit by the Great War, and a populace tested and tried in the greater war that followed. His accent was the real thing. VW’s pedigree was as British as could be. His maternal grandparents were Josiah Wedgwood (grandson of the potter) and Caroline Darwin, sister of the great Charles. His father, a village vicar, was a more or less dispensable figure in the son’s life. He died when Ralph was two and a half, but the boy seems not to have experienced any particular sense of deprivation as he was growing up. Upon the vicar’s death, Ralph moved with his mother to Josiah Wedgwood’s magnificent manor, Leith Hill Place.

We can dispense with other biographical details quickly. Ralph studied at the Royal College of Music and at Cambridge, and for further lessons he sought out Max Bruch in Berlin and Ravel in Paris. He became a collector of English folk song, edited the Anglican hymnal, introduced himself as a symphonist in 1909 with his Sea Symphony, and followed that in 1910 with his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, a passionate yet serene meditation whose hymn-like harmonies evoke a cathedral’s vast spaces. In the First World War he served as an ambulance orderly, and we can only guess how his sense of life’s fragility was shaped by what he saw, tending the wounded on French battlefields. After the Armistice, he composed: chamber music, choral works, film scores, songs, symphonies, three full-length operas that receive scant attention and a one-act opera (Riders to the Sea) that deserves better than it gets. He conducted. He lectured. By the time his long life ended, he had carved out a place as thespokesperson for English music. Yet another British composer put this into perspective.

In a 1990 interview, Michael Tippett told me that, in essence, VW had created a brand: “He made what he thought of as English music.” English music. That is what he set out to create. Many potential listeners seem to have accepted his desire to write English music as proof that he managed to do so. Much VW is indeed so British in flavor (or what we think of as British, thanks to him) that the music does not travel well. His symphonies, however, mark him as a genuinely universal spirit. There. I’ve used the word again. Universal. Of course I mean that as a compliment. VW would not have taken it that way. He insisted that no such thing as universality in music exists (as Simon Heffer makes so clear in his 2001 biography of the composer, Vaughan Williams). While he was proud to be a nationalist, posterity has taken him too literally at his word. The consensus among many is that his scope is limited. The irony is that what VW found in rural England convinced him that music is for everyone. One of his Cambridge degrees was in music, but the other was in history.

In other words, he was not afflicted with the tunnel vision that can be bred by exclusive study in a single field. He was able to place music and the other arts in historical context, and he developed a sense of cultural tradition that translated quickly into his desire to instill others with a love of their native cultural heritage. In 1902, he gave the first of his university extension lectures on music, at a technical school in Bournemouth. A journalist in attendance reported that VW had taken the radical step of illustrating his talk with music examples. “This is an entirely new idea and one which enhances the value of the lectures and makes them more intelligible to those who possess only a rudimentary knowledge of music.” Within the year he would begin his own research into folk songs of the English countryside, asking locals to sing him the songs that their parents, and their parents’ parents, had taught them, and notating these melodies as he heard them. He became a popularizer, à la Aaron Copland.

He wanted, he said, to “break down the distinction between ‘classical’ and ‘popular’—all music should be classical and all music should be popular.” He believed music to be “the subtlest, most sensitive, and purest means of self-expression.” That last statement is from his 1912 essay “Who Wants the English Composer,” in which he also outlines his thoughts about how the most elaborate forms of music have music’s most elemental forms at their core: “…What the artist should be concerned with is the raw material. Have we not all about us forms of musical expression which we can take and purify and raise to the level of great art?

For instance, the lilt of the chorus at a music-hall joining in a popular song, the children dancing to a barrel organ, the rousing fervour of a Salvation Army hymn, St Paul’s and a great choir singing in one of its festivals, the Welshmen striking up one of their own hymns whenever they win a goal at the international football match, the cries of the street pedlars, the factory girls singing their sentimental songs?” Except for his talk of “purifying” the raw material and raising it “to the level of great art,” this love of the vernacular suggests artistic kinship with America’s own Charles Ives. In 1904 VW signed on as editor of the Church of England’s hymnal. A dedicated agnostic, he came to understand, as his wife Ursula wrote in her 1964 biography R.V.W., “that for many people the music the Church gave them each week was the only music in their lives and that it was all too often unworthy both of their faith and of music itself.” He intended to make that right, and his versions of Anglican hymns are sung to this day.

His work on the hymnal extended VW’s reach far beyond the concert hall, into the lives of his countrymen, for churchgoing in those days was more common than now and hymns offered an outlet for spiritual expression. As VW became an artist of increasingly high profile, he never lost his belief in music’s essential place in the lives of men and women from every part of society. Populism is a giant step on the way to universality, whether or not that is your destination, and in hymns and folk music VW discovered a voice at once unique and multilingual. In 1914, in the “Course No. 1 of the Home Music Study Union,” he maintains that “If an art is to live it must spring directly from the life and character of the people where it had its origins. No art has any strength or life which is imported from without and planted down on a community from the outside…. “We [the English] shall not evolve great music by trying to fit our home-made ideas to foreign forms.

The nobility of Beethoven, the passionate utterance of Verdi, grew out of their own nationality.” To create his brand of English music, he had, as Michael Tippett said, “to break free from the very strong Germanic influence which was all over Europe and America.” VW began composing at a time when the temptation was strong to imitate German models. Americans such as Edward MacDowell and Henry Hadley (first SFS Music Director) often gave in, writing skillfully made but usually derivative works, sometimes even adopting German titles in a misguided attempt to lend the music greater cachet. Against such attitudes and approaches, VW proposed his brand of nationalism. His insistence on the regional, however important in helping him break away from accepted templates, diminished his reputation, and many potential lovers of his work have no doubt avoided his music because of his aggressively nationalist stance.

Michael Tippett believed that the overtly international impulse his own music exhibited, and the music of his compatriot Benjamin Britten—both of them a generation younger than VW—disappointed the older composer, who thought that “we had somehow let down his dream of national music.” While VW identified folk-song as the link between music and daily life, he seems to have been determined to ignore the simple and self-evident fact that folk music emerges not from national longings but from human needs. Folk tunes may reflect a nation. The sentiments set to the music cover a wider range: lost love, say, or a mother’s despair at a son going to battle. No matter where the songs originate, they find their themes in the everyday. VW himself admitted this in his Encyclopaedia Britannica entry for “Folk-Song” in 1929: “An art if it is to have life must be able to trace its origin to a fundamental human need…. To this the art of music is no exception; [the British composer Hubert] Parry has pointed out that the universal law of evolution demands that we should be able to trace even the most elaborate composition of Beethoven or Wagner back to some primitive germ.

This primitive, spontaneous music has been called ‘folk-song’…. It has been said that if we did not know by experience of the existence of folk-song we should have to presuppose it theoretically to account for the art of music.” Perhaps unwittingly, VW made a case for music’s universality when he described music as “something which is necessary to our being,…a serious factor in our life.” If some of his works are so rooted in English soil that they cannot easily be transplanted, the nine symphonies are different. These works are filled with serious factors—seriously dramatic, seriously affirmative: necessary. In the symphonies, VW distances himself increasingly from a “national music.” Folk song liberated him. It did not confine him to England’s shores. It enabled him to join company with the likes of Beethoven and Verdi, composers he loved, and whose nationalities are probably the last things we think of, when we think of those two. Folk song enabled him, finally, to speak a musical language that can be understood by all. The only way to experience the music is to listen, but I want to offer some words about the Vaughan Williams symphonies. A Sea Symphony (Symphony No.

1) VW’s symphonic debut announced the arrival of a composer who could command a broad orchestral canvas, and of an artist at the center of the British choral tradition, determined to give that tradition broader meaning. A Sea Symphony is an hour-long work for orchestra, chorus, and a male and a female soloist. The words are Walt Whitman’s. This oceanic saga opens with a full-blooded vocal fanfare (“Behold, the sea itself!”) that may suggest we’re in for a musical version of Master and Commander, but soon we understand that this voyage is spiritual. The Sea Symphony is disguised as a late Victorian/Edwardian work, opulent in sound and gesture, yet it is aimed at a new century. Stripped of sentimentality, plotted for maximum drama, steeped in the harmonies of hymn and folk music, this honest, idealistic work is a journey toward something finally named at its climax: the transcendent. A London Symphony (Symphony No.

2) This four-part tone poem dedicated to the composer’s adopted city is less travelogue than an impression of the great metropolis, an attempt to arouse the kind of emotion that London might stir in visitor or native, circa 1913. As such, it is a historical portrait, one that shuns the pomp and circumstance of Edwardian England. We hear folk-like tunes, but also the bustle of commerce and urban commotion. The slow movement takes us to Bloomsbury Square on a gray autumn afternoon, while the conclusion—frenetic, cataclysmic, elegiac—was inspired by a line from H.G. Wells: “…the river passes, London passes, England passes….” Don’t expect jingoism from Vaughan Williams. Listen to a podcast about A London Symphony: Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 3 'A Pastoral Symphony' on CD - Buy online from Presto Classical Hallé , Sir Mark Elder Following highly acclaimed previous Vaughan Williams releases, Hallé announces a new volume of British orchestral jewels including his Pastoral Symphony which movingly depicts the horrors of the First World War.

Two of Vaughan Williams’ most popular works, Wasps Overture and Tallis Fantasia, are coupled with arguably his greatest and most original Symphony and a delightful multiple setting of a folk-song which enchanted the composer throughout his life. Hallé’s recording of Symphonies No 5 & 8 (CDHLL7533) was awarded Sunday Times Album of the Week and Music Web Recording of the Month (April 2013) The Wasps Overture has become one of the composer’s most popular works. From the opening orchestral buzzing of a swarm of wasps, it emerges as one of English music’s great tunes, this work is a showcase for the vivid orchestral colours of Vaughan Williams’ writing, presented here to the height of effect by the acclaimed musicians of the Hallé. Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is one of Vaughan Williams’s most frequently played works and is acknowledged as one of the greatest examples of writing for strings. Although the treatment of Tallis’s theme is mainly contemplative, there are dramatic and passionate moments in the Fantasia, which is scored for two string orchestras (the second orchestra comprising only nine players) with solo quartet.

The ‘Pastoral’ Symphony is characterized with a mood which is gently elegiac and dark, and which reflects the work’s true genesis. Although the title mistakenly led audiences and critics to associate the work entirely with rural landscapes and English folksong, it is in fact directly related to the First World War of 1914‑18. Vaughan Williams, although forty‑one when war was declared, enlisted as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps and served as a wagon orderly in France. Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’, for strings and harps was written for the New York World Fair in 1939, when Sir Adrian Boult conducted the first performance in Carnegie Hall. Vaughan Williams first encountered the folksong Dives and Lazarus in 1893, when he was 21, later collecting several versions, and in this mature work he displays his affection for the melody in variants which are not exact replicas but reminiscences of various versions in several folksong collections, including his own.

“The troubled, sullied world that the music explores is recreated by Elder and the Hallé without ever becoming overwrought or maudlin, and bringing out unexpected resonances along the way.” The Guardian, 5th November 2014 **** “Elder and the Hallé Orchestra play the symphony from the heart and the music soars...A glowing performance of the much-loved “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” also raises the spirits.” Financial Times, 29th November 2014 **** “Performances that rival even the classic Boult recordings...Elder’s interpretation vividly highlights the troubled undercurrents of the Pastoral Symphony.” MusicWeb International, January 2015 “Elder and his inspirational Mancunians continue their own-label RVW cycle with a rapt account of the third symphony, its sombre reflection of a world torn apart by war here winning in its eloquent simplicity.” Classical Music **** “[the Tallis Fantasia] is tight-reined, yet also singing and surging with no trace of anti-Romantic tendentiousness...But what makes this release so special is Elder and the Hallé's interpretation of the Pastoral Symphony...Elder's

 telling way with the music's pacing...articulates the whole design with a vividness that allows an element of genuine dramatic sweep to come through.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2015 ***** “the finest volume yet in Sir Mark Elder's unfolding Vaughan Williams cycle...Abetted by uncommonly articulate orchestral playing, the performance of the Pastoral Symphony evinces a glowing dedication, remarkable luminosity of texture, songful rapture and emotional clout that mark it out as a front-runner...A marvellous disc.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2015 “It is still a revelation to find how much Sir Mark Elder draws from well-loved and oft-performed scores…[the Pastoral Symphony is a] wonderfully perceptive performance.” International Record Review, March 2015 British Composers - Vaughan Williams: Symphonies / ...

- Warner Classics: 5099908748423 | Buy from ArkivMusic SEE, HEAR & LEARN MORE! Notes & Editorial Reviews Works on This Recording Customer Reviews Notes and Editorial Reviews Sir Adrian Boult (1889ï¿½1983) gave three symphonic premières of Vaughan Williams and recorded the symphonies twice. Here, in vintage 1960s stereo from Kingsway Hall and Abbey Road, are the finest fruits of his Indian summer in the recording studio. Composer and conductor, matched to measure, share in sound a vision of humanity and hard-won experience transcendent over half a century: from Whitman and the Sea Symphony to the last, late wintry wordless music of Scott of the Antarctic and Thomas Hardy. Ralph Vaughan Williamsï¿½s career as a symphonist may be divided into three periods: there are the two symphonies he composed before 1914, the three between the wars, and the four between 1944 and his death in 1958 at the age Read more of 85.

(The Fifth Symphony is an untidy straddler, since it was begun in 1938 but not completed until 1943; much of its music, however, belongs to the inter-war period, as we shall see.) During the first 35 years of Vaughan Williamsï¿½s life, the leading British symphonists were Stanford and Parry, both of whom were his teachers; but it would be a bold critic who could detect their influence when it comes to VWï¿½s orchestral music. We can, however, detect a general influence of Elgarï¿½The Dream of Gerontius (1900) in particular, rather than the two symphonies of 1908 and 1911ï¿½on the composer of A Sea Symphony (1903ï¿½9) and A London Symphony (1910ï¿½13). Proms 2013 - Vaughan Williams - A Sea Symphony - YouTube Proms 2013 - Vaughan Williams - A Sea Symphony Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content.

Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Jul 18, 2013 I. A Song for All Seas, All Ships II. ( 20:10 ) On the Beach at Night Alone III. ( 32:09 ) Scherzo: The Waves IV. ( 40:22 ) The Explorers Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Proms Youth Choir and soloists Sally Matthews & Roderick Williams for Vaughan Williams 'A Sea Symphony' Category Learn and talk about A Pastoral Symphony, 1922 compositions, Symphonies by Ralph Vaughan Williams For Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony see Symphony No. 6 (Beethoven) ; for other Pastoral Symphonies see Pastoral Symphony (disambiguation) Ralph Vaughan Williams ' Symphony No. 3, published as A Pastoral Symphony and not numbered until later, was completed in 1922.

Vaughan Williams' initial inspiration to write this symphony came during World War I after hearing a bugler practising and accidentally playing an interval of a seventh instead of an octave ; [1] this ultimately led to the trumpet cadenza in the second movement . The work is among the least performed of Vaughan Williams' symphonies,[ citation needed ] but it has gained the reputation of being a subtly beautiful elegy for the dead of World War I and a meditation on the sounds of peace. Like many of the composer's works, the Pastoral Symphony is not programmatic, but its spirit is very evocative. None of the movements are particularly fast or upbeat (the composer himself described it as "four movements, all of them slow"),[ this quote needs a citation ] but there are isolated extroverted sections. It was first performed in London on 16 January 1922, with Adrian Boult conducting. [2] The symphony was dismissed by Constant Lambert , who wrote that its "creation of a particular type of grey, reflective, English-landscape mood has outweighed the exigencies of symphonic form".

[3] Peter Warlock 's often-quoted comment that "it is all just a little too much like a cow looking over a gate" was in fact a comment on Vaughan Williams' style in general, and was not aimed specifically at A Pastoral Symphony, which he on the contrary described as "a truly splendid work" and "the best English orchestral music of this century". [4] Vaughan Williams emphasized, however, that the work is "not really Lambkins frisking at all as most people take for granted" [5] (i.e., English pastoral scenery); its reference is to the fields of France during World War I , where the composer served in the Royal Army Medical Corps . Contents The symphony is in four movements: 1. Molto moderato 2. Lento moderato – Moderato maestoso – the slow movement opens with an F-major natural-horn solo above an F-minor chord, a theme that is developed by a solo cello .[ citation needed ] Just as in the first movement, the ideas flow gently from one to the next, ultimately leading to the trumpet cadenza.

Here, the instrument is in effect a natural trumpet (a trumpet without valves) in E♭, since the player is instructed not to use the valves. As a result, the seventh harmonic is played instead of the ordinary minor seventh , and so it sounds slightly out-of-tune with its nearest equivalent in 12-tone equal temperament . The entire cadenza is played over a pedal note in the strings.[ original research? ] The cadenza material later reappears on the natural horn in F, gently accompanied by a returning theme now played on the cor anglais . [6] The movement ends with a quiet chord in the violins ' high register.[ original research? ] 3. Moderato pesante – Vaughan Williams described this movement, the symphony's scherzo function, as a "slow dance".[ this quote needs a citation ] The trio , introduced by the brass section, has a quicker, brighter quality but retains some of the heaviness of the earlier music.[ original research? ] After the shortened return of the main material there is a coda with some fugal writing. This is the only time truly fast music appears in the symphony. A theme from the main section of the movement creeps into this fugue.

The movement ends in a major chord.[ original research? ] 4. Lento – the final movement returns to the contemplative manner of the first two movements, and functions as a summing-up and coda to the rest of the symphony. [7] It begins with a pentatonic passage for a wordless soprano voice (silent until this point), sung over a soft drumroll.[ original research? ] The orchestra then begins an elegiac rhapsody. The high point of the symphony comes when the violins all state the opening soprano melody appassionato. At the very end of the symphony, the soprano returns to sing the music into silence.[ original research? ] Notes[ edit ] ^ Michael Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1964, pp. 170–71. ^ Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., 1954, Vaughan Williams: Catalogue of Works, Vol. VIII, p. 704 ^ Lambert Music Ho!, p. 107 ^ See Barry Smith's biography of Warlock, pp.

115 & 258 ^ Letter to Ursula Wood, 4 October 1938 (Vaughan Williams, Letters, p. 265. ^ Howells, p. 128. References[ edit ] Howells, Herbert. "Vaughan Williams's 'Pastoral' Symphony". Music & Letters 3, no. 2 (April 1922): 122–32. Kennedy, Michael. The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. ISBN 978-0-19-315410-0 . New edition, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. ISBN 978-0-19-315453-7 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-19-315454-4 . First edition reprinted Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0-19-816330-5 . Lambert, Constant. Music Ho!.

London: Penguin Books, 1948. Smith, Barry. Peter Warlock: The Life of Philip Heseltine. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-19-816310-7 . Vaughan Williams, Ralph. Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams 1895–1958, edited by Hugh Cobbe. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-925797-3 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-19-958764-3 (pbk).

Question: Who composed a Sea Symphony, a London Symphony and a Pastoral Symphony?
Answer: RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS